Health Counsel, Wigs, and the Reform Dress

#114, #115,
& #116: "Researchers examining the early documents
containing Ellen G. White's advice on
diet and health are usually in for a rude awakening. We must concede that she was, after all,
a Victorian
lady, with very reserved ideas on the opposite sex. Most of her health advice had to do with
bringing into
submission the male sexual appetites, which she considered excessive."—Dan
Snyder.

#114: In the early documents, most of her
health advice had to do with . . . . This is a gross
exaggeration. Consider the
following statistics.

The picture on the video at this point is of Health, or How to Live.
The six articles by Mrs. White appearing in this pamphlet are now
found in book two of Selected Messages, pages 411-479. These articles
were first published in 1864, the year after her famous health reform
vision. In 1865 in Spiritual Gifts volume 4a, a chapter entitled "Health"
appeared on pages 120-151.

A computerized search in these two early documents was conducted for:

self-(abuse or pollut*) or (secret or solitary)-(indulgence* or vice*) or immoral* or
moral* or marri* or passion* or sensu* or vice* or sex* or
lust*

If you aren't sure why some of these terms were searched for, it may become clearer
to you under #117.

In the Health, or How to Live articles, statements dealing with
morality, some very brief, appear on 11 to 14 pages out of 69. These
statements, brief or otherwise, can be categorized thusly:

1 about the "moral pollution" before the Flood

3 dealing with the present immoral state of society

4 about the physical and mental results of [p. 81] immorality

4 regarding the causes of immorality

2 on the Christian duty to be morally upright

1 on the necessity of thinking about the upbringing of children
before bringing them into the world

Some statements fall in more than one of these categories, and three pages contain
statements that are vague: Were they talking about liquor
or immorality?

In Spiritual Gifts volume 4a, statements touching on morality appear
on 5 pages out of 32. Of these there were:

2 dealing with before the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah

3 about the present immoral state of society

2 dealing with the physical and mental results of immorality

1 about the causes of immorality

1 on the Christian duty to be morally upright

So in these two early documents on diet and health comprising 101 pages, but 16 to 19
pages had any reference somewhere on the page to
issues of moral purity. That's 16% to 19%.

In 1864, Mrs. White's 30-page pamphlet, Appeal to Mothers, was
published. It dealt almost exclusively with the subject of morality, though
it also deals with some practical points relating to religious instruction and child rearing.
Since it should probably be called an early document
on morality instead of diet and health, it probably should be left out of the discussion, but
we'll throw it in anyway.

27 of its 30 pages had some mention of morality issues somewhere on the page.
Throwing it into our previous statistics, we now have 43
to 46 out of 131 pages dealing with moral purity, or 33% to 35% of the total number of
pages.

If we adjust the percentage to account for the fact that Appeal to Mothers
had fewer words on the page than the other documents, we end
up with but 28% to 30%.

So that's what we come up with even when we skew the numbers in favor of the
argument by 1) counting a whole page when only part of
a page deals with moral purity, and 2) throwing in a book that's really on morality rather
than on health and diet. "Most of her health advice"?

#115: Most of her health advice had to deal with
. . . . In the previous number we dealt with Mrs. White's
early documents. But
Mr. Snyder's statement could be understood to refer to all her health
advice, an idea that is even more ludicrous.

Out of the 622-page Counsels on Health, a minor portion talks about
morality, modesty, etc. The average born-again Christian would
appreciate most, if not all, of what she wrote in this portion.

Whatever portion of her book Ministry of Healing that deals with this
subject is extremely minute.

#116: . . . had to deal with excessive male urges.
Technically, it is not the male sexual appetites that are excessive per se, but
the
indulgence of them. Would any born-again Christian disagree that there is all too much
promiscuity today?

Anyone who has read what Mrs. White wrote on the subject will notice that she
doesn't just talk about men. She also spends a good bit of
time talking about women, even describing death-bed confessions by ladies who admitted that
their own sinful, immoral practices were the cause
of their dying (e.g. Appeal to Mothers, p. 12). But most of her health
advice did not deal with this topic, whether regarding men or women.

Some might wonder what prompted James White to issue the pamphlet Solemn
Appeal, which is quoted so much by the video. The immoral
practices of a Seventh-day Adventist minister named Nathan Fuller had recently come to
light, in which practices he had involved some of the
members of his congregation (Arthur White, vol. 2, p. 287). If you had been a church leader
back then, you just might have been concerned about
moral purity too.